Thursday, July 30, 2015

WRITE NOW - DESIGNATE AN EDITOR'S DAY

Write
Now: Designate an "Editor's Day"

Reserve
one day a week strictly for the business side of writing.

Chief cook and bottle washer.

When
you're a NY Times bestselling author, and you're raking in cabillions, you can
afford an assistant and a professional editor.When you're self-publishing your own magazine online, editing for a small
press, journaling, and conducting your own research, you simply change
hats…every single day of the week.

One of the shinier bits of gold from
forerunning pioneers:

One
of the most useful wisdom nuggets shared by successful writers during the
decades I've pursued my own career has to be "Designate an Editor's
Day," for all the writing business,
proofreading, and loose ends from the week.

Plan on Editor's Day being busy.

I
have an ongoing Editor Do list with
plenty of highlighted items that I jump to first. Editing projects are worked
on every single afternoon.Depending on
the length of my fiction stories, sometimes I don't manage to squeeze in the
proofreading on the longer ones on the day I write it, so it falls on Editor's
Day.

With
a lot of projects going at once, ED usually turns out to be the busiest day of
my week.

Query
publishers or editors about stories and assignments. (Compose queries, update
records of submissions.) (I don't do this very much at present, but I used to
and I will again.)

Work
on OEV eBook project.

Key
in any hand-written notes or text.

Order
office supplies.

Load
paper into printer.

Program
reminders for week into phone.

Update
editing checklists / tutorials

Browse
through social pages, Twitter, and news pages to gather story fodder, and keep
up with current topics and events of professional interest to me.

Told
you, lots to do on Editor's Day, especially since I've started editing and
penning four different blogs in addition to Owl's Eye View and Friday Frights.
But having a day every week set aside for strictly the nuts and bolts of
writing business, keeps the distractions down to a dull roar during the week
when I'm trying to actually create.

On
September 13th, 2015 Terri married her Hottie Scottie, Blaze
McRob (Robert Nelson), who is an equally twisted horror writer who found her
online, crept into her world, swept her off her feet and revels in the fact that
they are two peas in a very strange pod.

No
doubt there will be many dark fiction tales for ooky aficionados to revel in
coming very soon.